06/08/2004: "Ronald Reagan Funeral Fatigue/Business Cards"

Is anyone else getting burnt out on the non-stop coverage of Ronald Reagan's funeral? I'm also getting tired of hearing what a saint he was. *Finally* this morning on CNN a foreign reporter for time.com had the balls to correct the erroneous assertions that the CNN commentator was making, (like everyone else) that Reagan single handedly brought about the fall of the Soviet Union. The reporter made some other negative points about Reagan's administration and got curtly dismissed. I mean, I don't believe in speaking ill of the dead, but Reagan was president of the US for 8 years and had a huge influence here and overseas, you can't just gloss over all the negative bits and glorify and exaggerate the positive because he died... and now they're talking about putting his picture on the 10 dollar bill. Oh yak!

On another note, I had a nice conversation on the phone last night with my sailing buddy. She wanted to go out, as it was a *perfect* evening for sailing, yet I couldn't go since I was feeling under the weather. (much better today thankfully). Still, we talked for quite awhile about art and other creative activities. She had lots of questions about my painting process, and it was nice to try and explain why I do things the way I do. I know I write about that stuff in this blog a lot, but somehow, having to explain things verbally made me think about things in a different way. It gave me a little boost. I filled out that Quick Draw application and put it in the post this morning...now I'm starting to have second thoughts...

Anyway, I'm posting a link to the business cards I made in Microsoft Word using Avery Clean Edge Business Cards (28877 template 8371) and my home printer. The Clean Edge type is very cool, no perforated edges, you can't tell them apart from professional ones. I got the idea to do them this way from another artist in Rhode Island, Kira, who said that her clients love having a choice and also that you can keep them updated for each new body of work that you do. See My Business Cards (in PDF)!. I think they look OK but the text isn't very crisp on the ones I made because I have a cheapo printer. I think I'll take the word file to a copy shop and have them print some out on the Avery cards for me.

Anyway, I'm excited to hand them out at the Quick Draw, I just realized that I'm going to have to set up in the park for this thing and my new easel is too big to move down there and my old easel is home made and looks really sad and pathetic. Also, the little tables I use for my paints and pallet are rickety TV dinner trays...I've seen the other artist's set up, many of them are plein air painters and have these very slick portable easel set ups that look very professional. I'm going to look like country mouse. At least I'll have nice business cards.

I'm going into work in about an hour. I just wanted to mention the fact that I'm home...I read an article recently in the NYT about obsessive bloggers who blog all day to the demise of their work ethic. I'm very careful about that. I blog in the morning at home before work, then during my lunch, and then again after work. I'm careful to not let my *habit* affect my job...just in case anyone was wondering.

Ronald Reagan's death: Just what the administration needs, a distraction from the war in Iraq. I don't watch tv very often, so I've been spared from the obsessive media blitz on the 4oth president, thankfully, and at only 25 I barely remember Reagan's term (also thankfully I'm told). However I heard this on the news last night: Ronald Reagan led the world without alienating the world. (I've paraphrased as I can't remember the exact quote)They were of course comparing Reagan to Bush jr.

I tried to look at your business cards, but you must be using a newer version of word than I am, since word crashed when it tried to open the file. You say the type looks bad, did you change the dpi settings on your printer? How bout laying out your cards in photoshop and saving as a pdf (which you should do if you're gonna get them professionally printed anyway).

The quick draw thing sounds like a great idea, and a good time. What media are you going to use? I assume either something dry, or something that dries quickly. Why bother with an easel at all, just grab a drawing board and sit on the ground or in a chair while you work.

Yeah, I can't load your cards either.Being Canadian and not having having cable I'm missing most of the Reagan stuff. Front page news today was Calgary loosing the Stanely Cup. Though I did see a bit on the colaspe of the Soviet Union which caused a bit of eye rolling here.

Sorry about the word document not opening correctly, I went ahead and saved it as a pdf and if you click on the link now it should open in adobe. It has that tell tell slightly blurry pdf look to it now but you can at least get an idea. Let me know what you think.

I will probably follow your advice John, and now that the layout is done I can just replicate it in photoshop tonight after work. The dpi settings on my printer were set to the highest quality, it just isn't a very good printer...

As for the news, yes, it's interesting that since Reagan's death suddenly the prisoner abuse scandal is not being mentioned at all, or the new Enron phone messages...funny that.

Thanks John, do you have trading cards? I'm collecting a list of the emails of people who wanted to trade with me. I just hadn't had a chance to make any yet. I thought they had to be original pieces of art don't they? Anyway, I'm glad that you think they look good. Having business cards is a big detail I've been putting off for years, it feels good to have finally done it!

Um, maybe I'm confused, but trading cards, traditionally are pictures and text printed on card stock aren't they? Why would they have to be original? When you get right down to it, a set of trading cards is just a limited (or possibly unlimited) edition series of prints isn't it?

I don't have my own, yet. I've been toying with the idea of setting up some small prints scaled to fit on something the size of a trading card and printing a sheet at a time at my local copy shop. And using them as oversized business cards (they won't fit in a wallet, so a collectore would, actually have to take care of them) I could put them in my portfolio using standard trading card pages, and that idea intrigues me.

Ok, I wasn't previously aware of these artist trading cards. What I was talking about tho, was making cards like trading cards, and using them as business cards. Numbering and signing them would make them "collectible" and more like art and less like promotion. People will take just about anything they can get for free, however if the free thing has some sort of value, because it is limited they're more likely to keep it, and to keep it in good condition, which is good because it'll spread your work around so people can see it, and if people know they can get these things by, going to openings or whatever then you may get more people to come to things like that. People appreciate free things. Especially people who can't afford to buy art, in theory they'll appreciate the free art that you provide and when they can afford art tehy'll remember you. It's all just an untested theory still of course.

E: Your business cards look great! And you solved the problem of having to pick just one painting! The trading card idea is cool. Another thing I've seen is magnets - you buy it in sheet form, and one side has a paper backing you peel off, and adhere photos or whatever paper you want to the sticky surface. Voila! Instant fridge mags.

Oh, I hadn't thought of making my own magnets, I was thinking of ordering some from a company called vistaprint.com

It might be cheaper to do it myself...I did make magnets from photos of friends, cut them out and around their figures and put them on my fridge. It was a lot of fun. I did something similar at work for people's pets...I'll have to do a cost analysis and let y'all know which way is cheaper to go. The website says they are as low as .16 cents each. That sounds pretty good.